"The Ubuntu development community announced today the availability of Ubuntu 10.04 alpha 2, a new prerelease of the next major version of the Ubuntu Linux distribution. This alpha is the first Ubuntu release to completely omit HAL, a Linux hardware abstraction layer that is being deprecated in favor of DeviceKit."

It's nice in theory, but realistically the hooks are often broken from version to version, one subsystem to another. Not that I can really expect much, if the kernel team won't bother to maintain stable APIs why should anyone else? You can replace subsystems to your heart's content as long as the APIs don't change. No one, however, seems to care about maintaining a stable API for desktop Linux. They just don't see it as important for some reason.

That's bunk. The only reason for stable in-kernel APIs would be to allow outside coders easier maintenance for their patchsets. The Linux developers don't care about that. They want development in-tree. If you don't want to get your stuff into the tree then they don't care about you. Too bad. All kernel -> userpsace interfaces have been very stable. As for desktop APIs, they are also very stable. How long has GNOME 2 been around? 8 years. How long did KDE 3 stick around before KDE 4? 6 years.